


on or off

by eggstasy



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, M/M, Season/Series 12, some other background stuff/characters not worth tagging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 16:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6617830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggstasy/pseuds/eggstasy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He draws up his knees and holds Wash's helmet against his chest.  Bows his head to it and counts.  Counts.  Doc told him that once, that it's good for calming down people having panic attacks, so it'll probably work for him freaking out.  Not that he's having a panic attack because Tucker doesn't have panic attacks.  Tucker just gets stuck doing shit he doesn't want to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on or off

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Strudelgit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strudelgit/gifts).



Locus levels that big 'fuck you' gun at Wash and it's like the red glow of it is filling Tucker's eyes, head, hemorrhaging into his brain like a stroke.  He can still hear that punched-out sound Wash made when Locus had incapacitated him at the crash site.  He can still see the way he'd just gone _limp,_ how he'd just _dropped_ and how his arms shook when he'd tried to push himself back up-

No, it can't- Tucker won't _let it_ -

“ _Wash,_ ” Tucker shouts and he's moving, he's grabbing Wash's shoulder as Carolina orders something about staying together, he's shoving Wash out of the line of fire-

Something grabs him and tears him from Wash, reaches inside him and grips his guts and _shakes_ and Tucker gags as world curls in front of his eyes, as flashes pop and scorch his vision white and orange and red and burnt-cornea-navy blue.  Tucker flies and then he falls _hard,_ slams down onto earth, bounces and keeps falling.  His head cracks against rock hard enough for him to lose count of how many times it happens and he scrabbles, fingers slipping and scraping over rough surface until finally he finds a handhold and then he hangs there, dangling.

Tucker blinks into the darkness of his helmet.  His visor is shattered.  He'd almost lost his eyes to the chips of it flung into his face.  Something drips hot into his brow but his grip- he won't last long, so he paws frantically at the cliffside until he finds another hold, toes his feet along the rocks until he can finally hug the rockface, shaking and panting.  How hurt is he?  How bad off is he?  His head’s definitely bleeding but it doesn't hurt yet.

Wind whistles past his shoulders and Tucker risks a look down before moaning.  “Oh _fffuck,_ oh fuck, oh fucking fuck,” he chants as he presses his helmet against the rocks, shuddering.  It's a long way down with a whole bunch of jagged human-killing spires at the bottom, of course.  “Okay.  Okay-”

_Washington._

“Wash!” Tucker gasps, tilts his head back, “ _Wash!_   Wash, are you okay?!”

For a sickening moment Tucker is terrified that he's down there, already down on the spires, torn into pieces.  Tucker doesn't want to look but he can't help himself, he looks down, tries to find in the darkness any hint of his armor, anything that looks out of place.  It's so dark- it was goddamn _day_ at the Fed compound.  How far did they go?  Where are the others?

“Carolina?  Caboose!  Grif, Simmons!”  Nobody comes to his rescue.  Nobody makes a quip over the edge of the cliff, nobody throws down a rope or even pretends to leave him for dead.

Did he wind up here alone?  God, are they _all_ split up?

“Okay, Tucker,” he whispers, and his hands feel too weak to hold him.  He's going to fall- _no._   “Not gonna fall,” he hisses through gritted teeth to keep them from chattering.  The wind whistles again, gusts itself into a howl, yanks on his armor.  He presses against the cliff.  “Baby steps.  C'mon.”  He digs his fingers into the rock before finally, finally prying a hand loose to reach up.

He almost falls once during his climb.  Chips start cracking from his visor and tumbling into his face so he pops the seals on his helmet.  Before he can throw it up onto the cliff the wind snatches it from him and flings it to the spires below, and Tucker swings away from the rocks at the force of it before grabbing back on and trying not to freak the fuck out.  He has never had a problem with heights before but he's pretty fucking sure he's developing one now. 

Those last few feet are hurried and clumsy and blessedly sweet, and when he finally heaves himself over the edge of the cliff he lays down and gasps, lets his limbs tremble, lets himself revel in just _not_ falling to his death.  He doesn't know how long he's there but the wind grows cool and then cold over the drying sweat in his hair.  He should probably try and find shelter.

Tucker rolls over onto his side and there, lying across from him, is Washington.

“...fuck,” Tucker says, a burst of anger blossoming in his chest before he realizes that if Wash was _conscious_ he'd have come to Tucker's aid, which means he's _un_ conscious which means not good, _not good._   Tucker pushes himself up and half-crawls, half trips over to Wash's prone form and turns him over.

There's a lot of blood.  “Shit,” Tucker coughs out, throat grated raw with all his horrified gasping and yelling, and he fumbles around the ammunition pouches in Wash's armor for the first aid kit.  Where's the blood even coming from?  Shit, was Tucker too slow, did Locus get him?  -is Wash _dead?_   He should probably check that first.

It takes Tucker too long to remember his busted helmet (and the wind's on his face, why the fuck _wouldn't_ he remember, shit his head feels like it's been stuffed with cotton) and he reaches down to pop the seal's on Washington's, lowering his cheek to his mouth.  Okay- okay.  He's breathing.  Okay.  He's alive.

Back to square one.

Biofoam.  He needs- “Biofoam,” Tucker croaks, because saying it aloud helps, because he's talking to Wash, he might wake up, he'll want a sitrep.  Wash always wants a sitrep.  Wash is a hardass CO who doesn't know how to relax, is carrying ten tons of baggage and then some, and Wash is a fucking asshole who doesn't think twice about sacrificing himself to save his men. 

Tucker finds the wound as a jagged hole torn into the gut of Wash's kevlar suit.  It's deep but Wash doesn't even twitch as Tucker presses the pen into it, the foam pillowing out and filling the hole with a hiss of decompression.  There's still some left so Tucker pockets the pen, sits back on his heels and just-

Just looks.

Cliffs.  Some forest cover behind them.  The cliffs tumble down into a jagged ravine.  Stormclouds are gathering far off in the distance, flashes of lightning faint from here but the quiet rumble of thunder rolls their way.  It's heading for them.  Definitely need to find shelter.

Tucker has his rifle, his sword, two grenades.  A canteen of water, his share of ration bars as well as Caboose's, a rudimentary first aid kit that _doesn't_ have biofoam because that shit is expensive and the New Republic is poor as hell.  Gauze, antiseptic, a couple of those energy capsules that you break with your teeth.

Nothing else as far as he can see.  It's dark, very dark, but the moon is still uncovered by the clouds and he can at least make out the shapes of the forest.  He'll have better luck finding shelter from the storm in there; with the wind this bad, staying on the cliff might very well drag them off.  And Wash is- he's lost blood, a lot of blood, and he'll need to be out of the rain or he might cool down too much.  That's a thing, Tucker knows that's a thing.  That hot medic chick told him that was a thing.  He's lost blood before.  It gets cold.

“Right,” Tucker says.  He counts.  Biofoam has instructions on the side, for morons who can't remember basic first aid.  Wait thirty seconds for the foam to adhere and set, or the wound could tear open further.  Tucker leans down to check the edges of the wound; no bubbling, no seeping.  Okay.  _Okay._

Tucker ducks down and pulls Wash's arm over his shoulders before slowly, carefully, heaving himself up onto his feet.  Wash is a dead weight against his side and Tucker is more worried by the _lack_ of pain on his face than anything else.  Even someone as notoriously resilient as Wash should be feeling something.  He's really, really out.  That's not good.

Thunder claps closer than before and Tucker puts it out of his mind to focus.  One step in front of the other.

Several yards into the forest, the canopy grows so thick over a copse of trees that it blocks out almost all the rain.  Tucker settles Wash upright against the ropey columns of vines and trunks before he realizes he left Wash's helmet back at the cliff.  He barrels out into the rain and just barely manages to save it from rolling over the edge, shaking the mud and rainwater from it and jogging back into the thicket and over to Wash's side. 

After a moment of deliberation, Tucker slots Wash's helmet on and pings Blue Team's shared channel.  “Caboose?  Caboose, do you read?”  Soft white noise hisses in his ear and Tucker curses, flips to Red Team's channel and then everybody's shared.  The New Republic frequencies yield the same results.  Radio's out.  Whether it's the storm or distance, Tucker doesn't know.

He draws up his knees and holds Wash's helmet against his chest.  Bows his head to it and counts.  Counts.  Doc told him that once, that it's good for calming down people having panic attacks, so it'll probably work for him freaking out.  Not that he's having a panic attack because Tucker doesn't _have_ panic attacks.  Tucker just gets stuck doing shit he doesn't want to do, and then royally fucking it up in the end and getting himself almost killed and getting Washington _wounded_ even when Carolina probably had everything under control.  Because Tucker can't stop seeing people fall over dead or dying when he's _right there_ and he could've _done something-_

“Tucker.”

Tucker jerks and rounds on Washington, who's staring at him with this bewildered sleepy look on his face.  “ _Wash,_ ” Tucker exhales and he pushes himself up on a knee.  “Dude, you're awake way sooner than I thought you'd be.  Well okay, I thought for sure you'd _die_ but I'm not complaining.”

Wash squints at Tucker in the barely-there light from the spots on their armor.  Tucker fumbles with Wash's helmet until he clicks on the lamps and props it up between them like a campfire.  “...you're bleeding.”

Oh.  Tucker reaches up to touch his head.  He'd forgotten all about it.  At some point his skull had started throbbing, but he'd just chalked it up to panic and, you know, just realizing you'd fucked up everything for the hundredth time and that no matter what you try to accomplish, you're always going to screw up.  So much for trying.  “It's- I’m fine.  Not bleeding anymore.  You're the one with a hole in his gut.”

“Had worse,” Wash says, like it's just a papercut.  The disturbing thing is that by the look of Washington's scars, he _has_ had worse.  A lot worse.  Of course, he's probably also had better medical care and reliable teammates too, but beggars can't be choosers.  Or something.  “Hey.”

Tucker jerks his head up.  He hadn't realized he'd looked away.  “What?  I'm fine.”

Washington stares at him before adjusting his shoulders back against the trunk with a sigh.  “Any idea where we are?”

Tucker laughs.  Wash stares at him again but it's just, it's _funny._   Wash gouged out his guts on a rock, Tucker almost fell fucking Highlander style, they're both bleeding and have hardly any food or supplies between them and Wash just- he _sighs._   Like, _oh well.  It's Monday.  I hate Mondays._  

“Tucker, maybe you should try to get some rest.”

The laughter's turned to hiccups and Tucker ducks his head, shaking it.  “Y'know, I had- when we first broke in, and we were winging it the whole way through the complex to get to you guys?  I totally thought we would find you and you'd go like, you'd say _man, sorry Tucker.  I underestimated you._   We made it all the way to the door and I thought that would totally happen.  And then you're just _standing there,_ with all your shit and your guns-”

“Tucker-”

“-like you were gonna come save _us_ and like, what did we even do that for?  And then everyone's dead and fucking-”  Tucker chokes on another weird sound that's caught between a snort and a giggle and bends over until the coughing fit is done.  Wash's hand is on his back.  Tucker stays down.  “And then fucking _Felix_ comes out, and I _give him the grenade._   I gave him the fucking grenade!  Because I totally thought he'd just- just _throw it better,_ or-”

Wash's voice is soft.  “Tucker.”

“I'm such a fuckup.”  Tucker keeps his head down because his vision's blurring and his voice sticks thick in his throat.  He curls his hands into fists on his knees and stares, stares at the blood still in the cracks of his gauntlets where the rain couldn't wash it away.  “I'm just such-”

“Stop,” Wash murmurs. 

Tucker stops.  Shudders and stops.  Bows his head almost to his knees and just.  Stops.

Wash at least gives him a few minutes to get his breathing back under control, though he doesn't move his hand.  “Every one of us got bought in by this civil war fiasco.  I knew Locus was dangerous, but I never suspected this.  You shouldn't be so hard on yourself.”

“I got two guys killed trying to find you,” Tucker snaps.

The pause is barely there, but it's enough.  “It happens,” Wash says.

Tucker shrugs Wash's hand off.

“It _does._ ”  Wash's face looks older in the stark light of his helmet lamps, damp hair drooping his bangs into his eyes, skin sallow and face lined with pain.  He has his other hand to his wound.  Tucker hadn't noticed.  “It happens.  I don't want to say you get used to it, but-”

“Don't say it then,” Tucker mutters.

The rain patters against the canopy overhead.  Water weighs down the leaves and sends the occasional drip down onto them.  Tucker pushes himself up finally and unhooks his canteen, unscrewing the top and holding it out wordlessly for Wash to take.  Washington's eyes travel over his face and it takes the kind of effort used to move mountains, but Tucker manages to meet his gaze for a few seconds before drifting away again.

Wash takes a drink.

 

* * *

 

The rain doesn't stop for hours, but by the time the clouds part the sun is fighting through them, shining weak and wobbly in streams just past the canopy.  Tucker had turned off the lamps on Wash's helmet a while ago to save its portable power source and he's happy to see daylight again, if for no reason other than a chance to get a closer look at Wash's wound.  The biofoam has completely sealed the wound and the rain had washed a good amount of the blood away, though it still cakes in the crevices between the undersuit and Wash's armor with annoying tenacity.  “You bled a lot,” Tucker tells him and forces half of his ration bars onto Washington, who of course refuses to eat more than one.

“We have to-”

“Conserve our supplies, I know, I know.”  Tucker pockets the rest begrudgingly.  “If we gotta eat like, leaves and shit, then some of the rebels showed me stuff that's not poisonous.  If it gets bad.”

“We don't even know if we're in the same climate.”

And that poses another problem: eventually, they _will_ have to walk.  They'll have to walk and try and figure out where they are, if it's even feasible to try and meet up with the others.  With no idea of the direction it is toward _either_ of the bases and no idea where their friends had landed, there's almost no _point_ to walking.  “Dude, seriously, with you so fucked up we might as well park it here and try to ride it out.  At least until you can move around.”

“I can move,” Washington protests.

Tucker shoves him back when he tries to get up.  “ _Stop._   You're the only one with biofoam here and I already used at least half of it.  Sit the fuck down, I'm gonna go MacGyver a shelter for us.”

Tucker does not MacGyver it, but he does reasonably well.  Turns out that his sword, while great at cutting, unfortunately also has a tendency to light dry things on fire so he has to be careful about which branches he chooses to make them shelter.  Luckily the rain drenched most of the forest, and there are also a ton of those gigantic purple leaves all over the place so Tucker makes three trips back and forth to the alcove where Wash is resting to deposit his makeshift building supplies. 

Wash eyeballs his progress and Tucker ignores him until the shelter collapses for the second time.  Wash is at least not all snotty about it when he tells Tucker, “Try using the existing structures as the support pillars and build on top of that.”  It works out better using the surrounding trunks and laying the logs across the branches and draping the leaves over them.  He ends the afternoon tired and sore, but now they'll have _total_ protection from the rain, and not just an already soaked canopy to keep them dry.

Wash isn't happy about it, but when Tucker shoves another ration bar at him, he eats it.  “So what happened to your helmet?  I assume it's damaged.”

“Yeah, it's at the bottom of that cliff.  Where I almost was.”

The ration bar wrapper crinkles in Wash's fist.

“I was a badass and climbed back up the side while you took a nap,” Tucker says, but the boast lacks his usual punch as he just tiredly eats the second half of his own ration bar from earlier that day.

Washington had been keeping his helmet on wherever possible to monitor any incoming radio chatter so Tucker can’t tell exactly what his expression is, but he’s staring at him pretty intently.  “So you climbed back up that cliff after a landing like that, accurately assessed the situation, performed first aid on me and then got us both to shelter.”

Tucker shifts his weight.

“I suppose that’s kind of badass.”

Tucker’s heart clenches at that and he doesn’t know whether to be angry or relieved.  He settles on angry because it hurts less.  “It’s my fault we’re here.  Carolina- she had a future cube, she was getting us out-”

“You don’t know this is a result of what you did-”

Tucker scoffs.

“ _You don’t._ ”  Wash pins him with what’s definitely a glare beneath his visor.  “You used your best judgment in every situation presented to you.  That’s all you can do.”

Thunder claps in the distance and Tucker gets up to look around for something to eat instead of dealing with that, with this, with the ball of tension wound up in his gut.  He has a hard time adjusting to the sight of his rifle scope without his helmet, but he brings back some fuzzy animal thing that doesn’t look poisonous.

“Tucker,” Wash tells him after some hesitation, “we don’t have a fire.”

Tucker heads back out to find something to light on fire.  The rain begins pouring two steps from the shelter and he stands there, fists clenched and head bowed.  Wash doesn’t call him back, but when Tucker finally heads into the shelter, dripping all over their comfy leaf-beds, he watches him and leans toward him whenever his wound will allow.

 

* * *

 

The morning finds Tucker sore from sleeping sitting up, rifle in the crook of his arm.  His head still aches and he’s hungry as hell, but it’s at least not raining or threatening to rain for once. 

Wash is gone.

Tucker scrambles, almost knocks down half the shelter before Washington’s head pokes around a leaf.  “It’s all right, I’m out here.”

Tucker wilts back against the tree trunk, knocks his head on the bark.  “ _Wash,_ seriously.”

“I didn’t think you’d wake up.”

There’s not much of a view to be had, but Tucker has to admit that all the green is better than the ever-constant dirt brown of the New Republic caves.  Of course he’d trade both for real fucking civilization, a place with computers and vending machines and the _internet._

Wash has a hand pressed over the biofoam so Tucker is immediately suspicious.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Wash would say ‘I’m fine’ with his arm cut off.

“I’m serious!  -all right, I’m not _fine_ in that I couldn’t run a marathon, but I’m all right.  I can walk.”  Wash nods toward their shelter.  “We can’t just stay here.  We need to get moving.”

“Okay, which way?”  Tucker waves an arm.  “That way looks like trees and shit.  And _that_ way seems to be more trees and shit.  We could always go jump off the cliff if you think that’s better.”

“I was thinking the about the cliff, actually,” Wash says coolly.  “You said there’s a river down there, right?  Rivers empty into either lakes or oceans.  Either way we’ll orient ourselves and we’ll be near a source of water.”

It’s simple and makes sense and it’s something Tucker _knows_ so he’s not sure why he didn’t think of it.  “…okay.  Fine, I guess that’s.  A good idea.”

“Thanks.  I have those sometimes.”

Tucker cuts up some tree branches and ties them around his chest with some vines while Washington watches and rests and is bullied into eating half a ration bar.  The river might be a good source of water but from what Tucker could see, not a good source of burnable material.  They’ll need a fire to cook eventually and he’s not gonna fuck _that_ up again.

The cliffs run along the river and they walk a fair distance from the edge because the wind occasionally gusts and staggers their path.  When Tucker heads over to check their progress and reports back that the river is turning away from the cliffs, Washington scowls.  “Then we’ll need to find a way down.”

Most of the drop is sheer, but there _is_ one section that crumbles and has a bit more footholds than usual.  Tucker can handle it, he’s pretty sure.  “I’ll go down first,” he says, igniting his sword.  “I’ll cut stuff up.  Make it so you can step down instead of climbing.”

“Will that sword cut through rock this solid?”

“Are you serious?  Dude, my badass sword melts steel like _butter._ ”  Tucker demonstrates and the boulder he cuts in half glows at the edges. 

It takes nearly the entire day, but Tucker climbs down and manages to landscape enough of the cliff face for Washington to follow.  He doesn’t say a word when Tucker grabs onto him and helps him down the last few meters, and crumples against the rock where Tucker sets him without a sound.  Tucker leaves him there and heads over to the river to refill his canteen; on his way back he shoots this three-legged rabbit thing that a lot of the rebels told stories about back at the camp.  He’s pretty sure it’s okay for food.

When he comes back Washington has taken off his helmet and is fiddling with the armor on his torso.  His gloves are red.

Tucker drops his stuff and comes over to his side to help him, but Washington slaps his hands away and Tucker leans back, hurt.  Wash manages to get his armor off himself so Tucker just grabs a few of the dry shrubs and shoves them up against one of the smaller logs, starts a fire with his sword and takes a guess at how to skin an animal with his combat knife.  It’s kind of a mess and he doesn’t have a spit anyway, so he hacks off chunks of meat and just cooks them on his knife.  It’s chewy and definitely gamey, but not all that bad compared to eating almost nothing for the past few days.  It takes a hell of a lot of his self control, but he manages to only eat a third of what he’s got and brings the rest over to Wash at intervals.

Wash looks down at the sizzling chunks in Tucker’s hand, then up at his face before taking them and looking away again.  When Tucker looks back, he can see Wash chewing and that’s enough.

“I’ll take first watch,” Wash says in that asshole voice that brooks no argument.

Tucker is too exhausted to fight or care about Wash being a dick and giving him the silent treatment so he just rolls over and passes out harder than he ever has before in his life.  With exception to that one time he and Sister went at it for almost two hours.  That was great.  Better than this bullshit.

 

* * *

 

Tucker wakes to Washington pressing a hand over his mouth in true serial-killer fashion.  He almost throws back an elbow on instinct before he catches himself and notices Washington is pointing up toward the cliff.  Without his HUD to magnify what he’s seeing Tucker has to squint into the early morning sun (why is it morning, why didn’t Wash wake him for his watch).

A Pelican in the distance.

Hope surges up and Tucker pulls away from Wash, scrambling up to his knees until Wash yanks him down again.  “ _No,_ ” he hisses, “find cover.”

“Find _cover?”_ Tucker asks incredulously.  “That’s our fucking ride out of here!”

“Or it’s a bunch of mercs looking to finish us off.  Tucker, _find cover._ ”

There’s not a lot of cover between the cliffs and the river, so they end up sinking into the water up to their necks near a bunch of reeds and watching as the Pelican circles the cliff where they’d landed.  Tucker holds his breath as the Pelican settles down just long enough to let off a small handful of passengers.

Passengers in _black._

“ _Fuck,_ ” Tucker whispers.  “How’d they find us?”

“I don’t know.”

It gets worse when the last passenger to disembark has orange highlights.  Fuck, fuck _fuck._   Felix.

“Let’s get moving,” Washington murmurs.

“Our camp is over there, they’ll know we were here.”

“They’ll _already_ know we were here, Tucker.  The cliff has plasma scorch marks all up and down the side.”

From where he’d cut it to help Wash down.  Shit. 

Moving through the water takes four times as long as moving on land.  They stick to the reeds, to the side of the river that has the occasional boulder to hide their progress but they still have to crouch to stay mostly hidden in the shallows.  With the sun beating down overhead and the colors of their armor not exactly conducive to stealth, Tucker’s _sure_ that at any moment they’ll be spotted and shot.  Even if he still had that glitchy camo unit he still doesn’t have his helmet, so he’d just be some asshole’s floating head in the water.  And without the helmet he can’t communicate with Wash outside of whispers and hand gestures.

How much is traveling in this water fucking up Wash’s wound, anyway?  Wash would’ve said something if it was bad, right?  Shit, no he wouldn’t.  He absolutely wouldn’t, because he’s a self-sacrificing _prick_ who doesn’t think about what _other people want and need_ before he makes _stupid decisions._

As soon as the river curves out of view of the cliffs, Tucker jabs Wash in the back and nods toward the shore.  Wash shakes his head and Tucker jabs him again and points toward where the river has already begun to narrow, current picking up the pace and pulling insistently on them both.  After a moment that feels more like a standoff than a suggestion, Wash finally nods sharply and makes for the shore.

“Okay, what the fuck is your problem,” Tucker growls once they’re finally out of the water and in the cover of some nearby trees.

Wash looks up from examining his wound and Tucker can _feel_ the indignant astonishment through his visor.  “Are you serious?”

“Did you _hear_ a rimshot?  I’m serious.  Why’re you being an asshole?”

“Now is _not the time_ to have this discussion-”

“Okay so when do you wanna have it, before or after we get shot to death?!”

“ _Tucker,_ ” Wash wheezes, glancing around.  “Keep it down-”

“They’re not gonna hear us from all the way up there, Wash!”  When Washington just goes back to examining the biofoam, Tucker sits back on his heels.  His gut burns, his hands are shaking, everything just keeps going _wrong_.  They don’t even know if the others are still alive, much less capable of pulling off a rescue.  They don’t know where this river leads.  They were almost shot to death right there, by the same people they’d thought had been their _allies_ and the entire planet is embroiled in some bullshit conspiracy civil war and the rebels- shit, the lieutenants, Kimball, they must think Tucker and the others are dead.  Nobody else knows they’re out here.

-except that Tucker programmed the rebel radio frequency into Wash’s helmet.  And Wash has been monitoring radio chatter _for the past two days._

Tucker’s hands shoot out and grab Wash’s helmet, fumbling for the seals; Wash fights him after his shock, grabs Tucker’s wrist and does some weirdo bending thing that hurts like a _bitch._   “Wash, ow, fuck, _ow,_ stop, just give me your helmet, I need it!  Hurry!”

“Jesus Tucker, just _ask_ first,” Wash snaps, and he jerks off his helmet and tosses it over.  Tucker catches it, slots it on and ignores Wash’s, “What the hell are you doing?” in favor of scrolling through the radio channels.  There.  The New Republic channel _is_ still open.  Tucker cuts it out, scrubs it from Wash’s presets and sits back on his heels, helmet in his hands.

“ _Tucker,_ what the hell is going on? _”_ Wash asks again, and he sounds close enough to true Washington meltdown that Tucker finally picks up his head.

“I put the New Republic frequency in your radio while you were out.” 

Wash freezes. 

Tucker drops his head again, slowly pulling Wash’s helmet back off.  “I was trying to reach them, to see if we were close.  I didn’t- I didn’t even think, of course fucking _Felix_ could- _whoa,_ ” Tucker cries when Wash lunges forward and snatches his helmet back, jamming it onto his own head.  “Shit, Wash, what-”

“I have the Federal Army’s frequency in here.”

Tucker snaps his mouth shut.

The silence sits hardly quiet, the rushing gurgle of the river nearby, wildlife skittering through the trees, wind sighing through the cliffs.  If they weren’t wounded and running for their lives, this place might actually be sort of nice, but Tucker’s sitting here watching Wash drop his hands into his lap and bow his own head and he realizes, kind of calmly, that they’re both fucking pathetic.

“I thought you were pissed off at me for fucking up so much,” he mutters.

Wash’s head jerks up.  “What?  No.  God- Tucker, I’m just- I’m pissed at myself.”

“Wh- For _what?_   For being _wounded?_ ”

“ _Yes,_ ” Washington insists.  “Tucker, I haven’t been able to do _anything_ but use up our supplies.  You’ve kept me out of the rain, you’ve kept me fed, you’re the only reason I didn’t bleed out up on that cliff-”

“I got us followed,” Tucker says, Wash’s words buzzing in his ears.  He isn’t making sense.  “I couldn’t even build a fucking _stick house_ without your help, I didn’t even think about a cooking fire-”

“-got us followed too, you cut up a mountain to _get me down-_ ”

“-almost got us _killed_ when Carolina threw that future cube-”

“ _Tucker._ ”  Wash pulls his helmet off and instead of the harsh lines and disapproval of a disappointed C.O., Tucker sees the same painfully earnest expression Wash wore when he’d sat he and Caboose down months ago after the Director was dead and told them, in all seriousness, _I’ll never be able to thank you enough._   “You guys came for us.  For _me._   You, Caboose, the Reds-” Wash stops, eyes drifting over toward Tucker’s shoulder as he swallows.  “You- you don’t know what that means to me.”

“I had to.”  It just pops out, but Tucker lets it because it’s true.  He did.  Every fucking thought in his head was about finding them, finding Wash, and getting them back somewhere safe.  After that Wash could take care of _them,_ but first he had to be rescued.  “Wash, I _had_ to.”

When Wash reaches over to pull him into a hug Tucker goes, and he thinks this is better than them yelling at each other about allies and squats and Caboose almost fucking killing them all for the eighth time.  He’d been pissed about Church- he’s _still_ pissed about Church, who has to be with Carolina now that he thinks about it, but he’d tore into Washington for it.  Who, sure, was also being an asshole, but that whole thing, _but he’s not here and all I’ve got is you,_ all of that?

That was fucking uncalled for.

“I’m sorry, Tucker,” Wash mutters against his ear and Tucker grips him a little harder.  “Everything I was doing, I- I wasn’t trying to make you doubt yourself.  I just wanted you to believe in yourself.  I wanted you to look at what you’re capable of and see what _I_ see.”

It’s probably the starvation and the five hundred adrenaline dumps he’s had in the past week that make Tucker ask, “What _do_ you see?”

Wash leans back but keeps his grip on Tucker’s shoulders, so really Tucker has no choice but to clutch Wash’s elbows in return.  “What I see is someone who’s- who’s _resourceful,_ and someone who’s smarter than he lets on, someone who _cares_ about other people and is driven to protect them.  I see someone who’ll pick himself back up, who doesn’t need anybody to babysit his ego in order to do the right thing.  Someone a hell of a lot stronger than me, if I’m honest.”

“That’s bullshit,” Tucker mutters, face burning.  “You don’t see that.”

“ _That’s_ bullshit, yes I do.”

“You talk an awful lot of mush for a guy who says he sucks at emotional things.”

Wash laughs, hisses and clutches at his stomach and Tucker lurches a little with him too, hand hovering over his.  “ _Ah-_ I do.  It’s like…like a broken faucet.  I’m either off or on at full blast.”

“Sooo, are you saying my competency totally turns you on?”

Wash laughs again and Tucker finally, _finally_ feels a smile pull at the corners of his mouth.

And then the forest explodes.

“ _Holy shit,_ you guys really are here!  Fuck, you look fucked up.  Tucker, where the hell's your helmet?”

Tucker picks up his head, moving his arm from where he’d thrown it over Wash and tries to blink away the sun-stare burn from his eyes.  “What the f- _Church?”_

“So it _was_ you two.”  And there’s Carolina, lowering herself to a knee beside them and what the hell, how did she even _get here._

“What- I don’t-” Wash at least sounds as confused as Tucker, staring between Carolina and Church’s little floating avatar hovering near her shoulder.

“Epsilon tracked the Chorus armies’ radio signals here before they cut out,” Carolina says.  “We assumed the reason they cut off so abruptly is because you both realized they _could_ be tracked.  Glad we were right.”  Her eyes roam over them both before snapping to the biofoam somewhat soggy and dripping a faint pink in Wash’s wound.  “What happened?”

“I’m fine, Boss,” Wash says, reaching for his helmet.  “Missed the organs.”

“You’re taking the healing unit when we get back,” she says sternly.

“So you guys have been following what’s been going on the radios,” Tucker says lowly, eyes snapping between Church and Carolina before finally settling on the AI.  “You’ve heard _everything._   All the shit we’ve been going through.  And you just, what, figured we had it all handled?”

“Tucker,” Wash interrupts, and there’s a gentleness in the hand he lays on his arm that keeps Tucker from blowing up right then and there.  “We have to get out of here first.  We’re being followed,” he tells Carolina directly.  “Felix, squad of five soldiers.”

Carolina hefts a cube.  “Then let’s get going.”

She primes it and lifts her hand but Tucker’s only got eyes for Church, the way his avatar shifts, glances at him, then looks away and oh, he better fucking _believe_ that the second they’re back with the others he’s going to fucking hear it like a goddamn _air raid siren-_

Wash’s hand goes around Tucker’s fingers and squeezes just as the world shrinks and burns into bright white light.

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the art + prompt of [Strudelgit](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Strudelgit/pseuds/Strudelgit). Art found [here,](http://guiltypleasuretrashblog.tumblr.com/post/139401633226/ahahah-went-a-bit-nuts-with-colors) prompt is as follows:
> 
> "future cube gone wrong and splits them off the main group at the worst possible time"
> 
> THANKS FOR THE BANGIN' PROMPT YO, THIS WAS FUN AS SHIT TO WRITE


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